American Apparel's attempt to infiltrate activist group and stop performance fails
Buy Nothing Day 2005, Montreal
* OTL players are in bold italics
The Plan
This Buy Nothing Day, Optative Theatrical Laboratories had planned a video shoot inside American Apparel to show patrons in the store what the company is really all about:
The Models enter first and start to get ready for the big shoot by trying on their American Apparel wardrobe.
Next on the scene is the producer, who informs the staff and managers that a shoot is about to begin for the website.
When the director, DOP, Makeup Artist and crew enter and start to set up the shoot, the models leave the dressing room and start posing.
But there's a problem, they're just not being exploited enough.
The director and crew give the models lolipops, bananas and try, in vain, to find the anal beads. Nothing seems to be working. The DOP, offended at this scene, quits to find less appaling work.
After numerous angry calls to the Producer, AA owner Dov Charney shows up personally and realizes that the only way the shoot will work is if he plays in it himself.
A fight and a couple of slaps later, we pause, applaud, remind all the patrons and staff that it's Buy Nothing Day and explain why we chose to perform in American Apparel.
What Happened
On the morning of Buy Nothing Day we get a few calls from people who heard about us through the Adbusters website and various other postings.
We explain the jam and
everyone has their input. Then, we finish up planning and get into
places.
When we arrive at the store, we find out that one of our players from that
morning was an undercover American Apparel security agent, here's him
flashing his ID:
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It took the security guards about 6-7 minutes to kick us all out. They had the element of surprise, not to mention 4 or 5 security guards positioned throughout the store so we weren't able to do the photo shoot inside. It didn't matter cause we decided to shoot it outside instead:
The photoshoot resumes outside as we pass out information on the problems with American Apparel, Buy Nothing Day and new corporate search engine Knowmore.org.
This caught the attention of Maurice Charney, Dov's (real) father and President of the Canadian chapter of American Apparel, who had called in the Montreal Police:
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Guess who shows up next? Mr Dov Charney. Not all that happy to see his son Charney Sr. starts calling him a liar and a bunch of other nasty things:
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Although the jam went very well, it's still quite
shocking that AA would stoop to spying on activists and trying to use
hired goons to cancel their performance, on Buy Nothing Day of all days!
What's happened since?
The mole (or "Jeff"), believe it or not, has posted a reply on the infringement Festival blog and on OTL member and BND player Cassandra Witteman's Blog, admitting to what he did, letting us know (as we suspected) that others were involved and making the astounding claim to be from the IT Department of American Apparel in LA and in town on vacation and just infiltrating us for kicks.
Obviously the American Apparel PR department's in full damage-control mode and getting a little desparate to have come up with such a ridiculous story.
You can read some of the debate in the comments here and in the discussion section of Knowmore.org here. There's also an interesting discussion about the American Apparel ads going on on Knowmore.org here.
The mole, even posted his video here. He thinks it makes us look bad, when in reality, the stupid comments he ads at the bottom of the screen make him look like a spy for the corporation that's a little full of himself.
Can I see more?
You can order a copy of American Apparel: Fake Revolution from Guerilla Video Productions
The DVD also includes OTL's Buy Nothing Day performance of Death By Latté at Starbucks (2004) and our jam of McDonald's (2002).
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE TECHNO REMIX OF MAURICE CHARNEY!!!
CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE OTL VIDEOS